CHAPTER 3 - ARIANNA
CHAPTER
Arianna
ITHOUGHT FOR A MOMENT I’d been having a bad dream, but as the dark green ceiling and opulent chandelier come into focus through my sore eyes, I realize with dread this is still vividly real.
For the second day, I feel dreadfully hungover. My throat is dry and my nausea high, yet not one drop of alcohol has passed my lips. Just the drugs I’m injected with.
I go to move, but quickly remember my wrists and ankles are cuffed to the bed. The searing pain in my extremities from being tethered is enough to make me heave, but not as much as knowing why I’m here.
I freeze as rough, calloused hands move up my flat stomach to roughly grasp at my breasts.
“You’re awake then? About time!”
“Get off me!” I snap, my body pointlessly twisting in its restraints, bucking away from Luca Bristoni’s hands to no avail.
“You need to remember what your job here is, Arianna.”
The stinging slap Luca delivers to my face doesn’t hurt. My mind remains disconnected from the physical. The only reason I know he slapped me is because I can feel the heat on my cheek where his hand connected.
I also know his fingers dig for entry between my legs, which only makes me buck against him harder.
I don’t want him. I want no one apart from Red, but he’s still not here. Why?
“You stupid bitch!” Luca snarls, his other hand grabbing my face and twisting it so that I have no choice but to look at him. He’s a watered-down version of Roberto, his brother - my first husband - the man I killed and the sole reason I sought out Red Bateman in the first place.
“Red isn’t coming for you. Have you not realized that yet?” Luca sneers. “Your attempts to deny me are pointless, and they always have been. You are destined for me, whatever anyone decided for us in the past.”
A lone, hot tear rolls off my burning cheek onto the pillow. It’s like this bastard can read my mind. Worse, he’s right. He’s enjoying that Red has left me to my fate.
I don’t even know how long I’ve been here. Neither do I know what happened during the many periods of being drugged up. My mind doesn’t remain lucid long enough to form memories or hold concepts of time. I could have been here days, weeks, months...
“Life will be more pleasant for everyone if you’d accept your position instead of pointlessly fighting for something and someone that doesn’t exist.”
Roberto’s face comes vividly into focus before morphing into Luca, who is the one actually here. I feel like screaming.
“Actually, perhaps it’s time to make Redmond Bateman nonexistent.
.. Yeah, maybe it’ll be arranged to bomb his shitty casino for real this time.
” A sneer cracks across the face of the man who so resembles his older brother.
“Although there’s little point in wasting time doing that, being as coming for you is not on his list of things to do. ”
Luca leans over me, poised like he may hit me again, but I refuse to flinch. Another slap or a punch can’t hurt as much as his words that I resent I’m starting to accept are probably true.
“Red doesn’t love you, you deluded whore,” Luca laughs.
“Besides, he’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is us.
You should always have been mine. You’re so much prettier than your sister.
Roberto should have had Maria - he wasn’t fussy.
Still, your Mr Bateman did me a favor by killing Roberto because now you are mine! ”
“Never!” I spit, except the words don’t come out because they’re muffled by Luca’s foul mouth crushing mine.
He’s also wrong in his presumption that Red killed Roberto. I’d love to tell him it was me just before I kill him too. I’ll do that without a second thought if I get the chance.
With a surge of defiance, I twist harder underneath him and disconnect his slobbering mouth from mine.
“Lie still!” Luca roars. And then, like a switch is flicked, his voice changes, becoming soft.
“I don’t want to hurt you, my darling.” His hand strokes my hair over and over, slowly and measured.
“It doesn’t have to be like that, and it won’t be like that because there will be no need once you understand. ”
I want to shout at him, scream; lash out. I’d even cut off my own arms and legs to be free from what’s holding me to this bed, but I can do little. This man is crazy, and if he thinks I’ll ever understand this, then Luca Bristoni is crazier that I thought.
I understand one thing, though. It’s fairly bloody obvious.
Red isn’t here. He’s not coming. If he was, he’d have been here by now.
A mix of devastation and terror curdles in my veins.
I really thought we’d got something together. I thought I’d finally found true love, and that Red was the one, but I’m a fucking fool. And I’m still a fool because somewhere deep inside me still believes it and that “something” is prepared to fight for it.
Hawking deep in my throat, I spit in Luca’s face, surprising him enough for his rough fingers to still in their pursuit. But my feeble attempt at stalling the inevitable is thwarted with the slight scratch on my neck.
It’s a subtle sign I’m now familiar with.
I’m correct in what I sense because within seconds my vision darkens, the sides of my mind narrowing into a thin tunnel and my struggling subsiding to nothing but darkness.